May 29, 2017

SIDE GUARDS FOR TRUCKS * USA: To avoid deadly aacidents

--- The car smashed into the tractor-trailer, wedging beneath it and rocketing out of the other side as a tangle of steel...An investigation by the Cox Media Group Washington News Bureau looked at underride fatalities from the past five years using federal crash statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The numbers show 1,433 fatalities linked to underride collisions from 2011 to 2015, with 299 deaths in 2015... For the first time, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash-tested a car traveling 35 mph hitting a truck equipped with a side guard... Video of the collision shows the sedan bouncing off the side guard with the dummy's head protected by the airbag in a survivable crash. The IIHS ran the same experiment with a car slamming into a truck without a side guard. The dummy's head violently smashes into the side of the big rig as the car jams beneath the truck in what likely would be a fatal collision... Since 1952, the federal government has required underride guards for the back of trucks as protection in rear-end collisions... Side guards add significant weight and can cause cracks in the frame rails of trailers, creating another safety issue, Sean McNally, a spokesman for the American Trucking Association, said... Washington, DC, USA - Cox Media Group/WPXI, by Patrick Terpstra - May 10, 2017